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THE ANNUAL ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY, JAN. 13, 1864. 



BY G E O I! G H W . H S J! K K . 



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THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF BUFFALO : 



THE ANNUAL ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY, JAN. 13, 1864. 



BY GEORGE W. HOSMER 



Members of the Historical Society, and Ladies and Gentlemen: 

My address must be historical; it shall be chiefly pertinent to the rise, growth, and 
character of our city ; my subject is the Physiognomy of Buffalo. 

But in times like these, when momentous history is being made, and we are all so 
anxiously looking upon passing events, and straining forward to descry coming desti- 
nies, — our threatened nationahty to be maintained and liberty secured, — our wealth and 
ourselves held ready for the pubhc need, — our young men to be given up if their coun- 
try calls them, — the dead to be mourned, and the living, in perils of warfare, to be fol- 
lowed with painful apprehensions; amidst such experiences, it is not easy to reverse the 
machinery, and turning back, leave the mighty crowd of daily events, and content one- 
self with gathering traditions and memories, and picturing the past. And yet good 
may come from occasional diversion of interest; the balance and health of our faculties 
are sometimes lost by long and intense concentration. When we gi'ow feverish with 
anxiety, impatient with what must be borne, it may do us good to wrench the mechan- 
ism, and turn backward for a little while; by no means to neglect our duties in the 
present, no, not for an hour, but to maintain true poise and soundness of life, and have 
ourselves in readiness for right decisions and strenuous action. 

Once wrested away from passing events, we soon find satisfaction in searching, and 
picturing to ourselves, the beginnings and progress of customs, institutions, and society, — 
from the oak back to the acorn, — from the Amazon back to its everlasting snow-drift 
fountains, — from these United States to those frail tempest-tossed vessels that felt their 
way to Virginia, to Massachusetts, to New York. 

A few weeks ago, I was in a smart young town of Michigan, scarcely thirty years old, 
which is rapidly assuming the airs of a city; and in the house of one of the first settlers, 
I saw two pictures; rude enough they were, and yet there was nature in them, and 
manifold suggestion. The artist was among the early settlers. One picture repre- 
sented the first three or four cabins in Kalamazoo ; women and children about the doors ; 
1 



2 THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF BUFFALO. 

tlie first doctor, on horseback, talking Avitli a man at Lis cabin door, probablj- giving 
liim a prescription for fever and ague, and ready to ride far and near to forest homes, to 
keep souls and bodies from shaking asundei", and in the distance was seen the good In- 
dian missionary, coming on his mule to welcome the settlers, and i-aise the voice of prayer 
and worship in their new home. The other picture was of the first trial by jury in that 
county, in a log eabiu. There w^ere the Judges, the Sheriff, the Lawyers, the Jury, the 
parties concerned. 

These pictures seized my imagination; from those solid blocks of stores and dwellings, 
and all the bustling life, I was back with the Romulus and Remus of the settlement, 
suckled by the wolf of savagery and hardship, — with those men and women who there 
gave themselves, like all first settlers, to win for their successors one of the thriftiest 
towns in the fairest country anywhere to be seen. Would that a painter had been here 
with our Romulus of Buffalo, Mr. Joseph Ellicott, to show him to us as ho rode on horse- 
back with Mrs. James Bi'isbine in 1802. Through the forest trees, not far from where 
we are now, he pointed to the Lake and River seen through the leaves, and assured her 
that a great city must arise here. We should like another picture of him standing by 
his compass in what now is Main street, in front of the Chui'ches; so confident is he 
that commerce must come here and pour out her horn of plenty, that he has resolved to 
lay out a city; so delighted is he with the grandeur of the situation, that he thinks he 
will make his home here: he selects for himself a noble manor, one hundred acres of 
land, between Eagle and Swan streets, and from Main nearly to Jefferson street- — almost 
enough for a principahty in Germany — and determines to build upon the western front 
looking towards the Lake; so here, upon what is to be the site of his house, ho stands 
by his compass, indicating the lines wh'wh are now our streets — Main street running 
north and south upon the crown of land ; Church street directly front from his door to 
the water; Erie street to the mouth of the Creek, wdiere commerce must come; Niagara 
street to Black Rock Ferry, which was a great institution in the early day ; and so on to 
the completion of the plan. 

Mr. Ellicott, in laying out our city, h;id large ideas, and worked upon a grand 
scale. There is originality in the ])lan. He did not bring a maj) of Xew York, or Boston, 
or Albany, and lay it down here; he wrought upon the inspiration of a magnificent 
hope, and we are greatly indebted to him for the open, handsome face of our city. 

It is reported that Mr. Ellicott said, " God had made Bulialo, and he must try to 
make Batavia." God did make the place and its surroundings ; the wooded ridge gently 
sloping towards the sun — the Lake stretching far away to the west, and pouring its un- 
ceasing flood along the majestic Niagara close by — the Canada shore — the Chautauqua 
and Cattaraugus hills — and the high lands of Evans, Aurora, and Wales — all together^ 
as seen from the Reservoir on Niagara sti-eet, is a noble panorama. I love to take stran- 
gers to see it. God made these surroundings and back-ground to relieve and set oflf our 
city's face, and He gives the contour of i\w. physiognomy; but particular features are 
defined, and expression is given, by the streets and squares. Philadelphia, Avith its 
checker-board arrangement, looks set, precise, demure. Boston Common, and the newly 
made parts of that city, are very beautiful, but the most of its features are painfully con- 
tracted and snarled up. The fiice of New York is much too long for its breadth, and 
the forehead is still enlarging into monstrous proportions; cerebral diseases maybe 



THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF BUFFALO. 3 

feared. State street in Albany, and Capitol Square at its head, are like the fine nose and 
imperial brow of a noble face; but many of the features of Albany are cramped and dis- 
torted, as if the old builders, remembering little Hollan.l, had still felt pinched for room, 
and so hved under the hill, fio-htino- ao-ainst the floods of the Hudson, as their fathers 
had fought against the Zuyder Zee, instead of stretching over the sightly summits. 

Our city has no neighboring hills, like Albany and Cincinnati, to heighten expression ; 
but its plan and streets, for beauty, health and convenience, I think, are unrivalled. 
There is enough irregularity to pi'event tiresome monotony, and not enough to create 
confusion. Mr. Elhcott, I suppose, intended Niagara S<[uare should be the centre of 
his city; from that point the streets run off in all directions — eight broad avenues — and 
at night, when these streets are lighted, from that point in the square where they all 
centre, they make a grand show, double lines of light stretching oflf into the surrounding 
darkness. This square did not become the centre of the city, because the State re- 
served a mile strip along the Niagara river, and so Buffalo was thrown to the east and 
south, in a measure interrupting the perfection of Mr. EUicott's plan. But as it has 
turned out, we have received a largess of favor from his liberal designing ; he gave to the 
city a good, comely face. But many of us can remember when the face of Buffalo was 
rather rough, and parts of the year too dirty, with mire, for washing to do any good. 
Main street was as broad as Mr. Elhcott laid it out, but its mud was said to have no bot- 
tom. I have seen teams sloughed on Mohawk street, near Delaware; and one team I 
remember seeing sunk so deep, that it seemed to be going through, until another team 
was brought to drag out and rescue the sinkers. I saw a young lady, one day, sloughed 
in the middle of Pearl street, near Tupper, so that she could not step without leaving 
behind her shoes and overshoes, perhaps the whole foot apparel; and there she stood, 
with a patience peculiar to those days, until I got boards and made a way for her poor 
feet. It was found, every spring and fall, that the fuce of Buffalo was too soft. Gradu- 
ally our fine pavements for street and sidewalk have been extended, the best I know 
anywhere, and now we have fifty-two miles of paved streets — so well graded that no- 
where is there steepness enough to be inconvenient for heavy draughts, and everywhere 
there is descent enough to make quick and cleanly drainage. The physiognomy of Buf- 
falo owes more than w^e think of to the excellent system of sewerage planned and recom- 
mended by Mr. Ohver G. Steele, and adopted more than twenty years ago ; it has been 
gradually extended according to the original plan, until now we have fifty-four miles of 
sewers, aU working, in their hidden ways, for the health and beauty of our city. 0, 
those dirty-faced, foul-breathed cities without sewers ! Chicago, Washington, Baltimore, 
and parts of New York, in a hot morning of August or September, have not faces fit to 
be seen, and the atmosphere in the by-places is loaded with disease. We have fifty-six 
miles of gas pipes, and thirty-three miles of water pipes, filling streets and houses with 
light, and furnishing water to extinguish fires, promote cleanhness, and add to the 
comforts of home. 

By all these outward means, costing about $2,000,000 in the aggregate, our city's 
physiognomy, which, though grand, was rude and shaggy at first, has been smoothed, 
refined, and beautified. AVe all know, in regard to human physiognomy, what wonders 
are wrought by the surface touches of hatters^ barbers, and milliners; so has tho'face of 
our city been made comely. 



4 THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF BUFFALO. 

But physiognomy depends much upon the soul within. A face may have good con- 
tour, fine complexion, elegant surroundings, the features well enough, and yet be blank, 
unmeaning. There can be no grand physiognomy without the illumination of a grand 
soul. I have watched college classes of young men, and seen the light of intelligence, 
and the dehcate lines and touches of refinement coming into their faces, as their minds 
and hearts were raised and dignified by generous culture ; unpromising heads and 
homely faces sometimes made glorious, from the animating spirit that came out visible, 
radiate, in eye and features. 

The physiognomy of cities takes characteristic airs and expression from the spirit of 
builders and citizens. The cities of the middle ages, those strongholds, surrounded by 
walls, frowning with castles and towers, grew out of the beUigerent spirit of cruel bar- 
barism ; and the physiognomy of those old feudal towns is like that of roughs and prize- 
fighters, by dreadful discipline made up to maul, or be mauled to death. The old castella- 
ted mount of Edinburglj seems still clenching its fists, and gritting its teeth with the 
ancient Scottish hate of England ; and York and Chester wear the stern features which 
the Romans gave them to overawe the ancient Britons. The towns and very hamlets of 
Wales still look grim and defiant toward England. 

The French have built Paris, and how the spirit of France appears in the gay, showy 
capital ! No place in the world like it to enjoy oneself, to be comfortable, to have pleas- 
ant si«"hts, and endless diversions, amusements, and scientific curiosities; it can take the 
weary, hard-worked man, and keep him busy in pleasant ways until he is rested; it can 
take the poor hypochondriac, and make him laugh himself into health. Gay, interest- 
ing, smiling Paris — the worldling's heaven — it is the ultimate result, the chef d^ceuvre 
of the French spirit. Paris is France, and in its face shows the soul of the nation, — the 
theatre more than the church — enjoyment more than virtue — the life that is, more than 
that which has not come yet. 

We turn now to the physiognomy of our own city. It is a comely,' noble face — open 
and generous, thoughtful and earnest — not grim with knotted muscles, as though born out 
of combat, nor soft with blandishments for the merely sensuous nature. I like the face ; 
it has a common-sense look of business, and yet it has aesthetic expression of convenience 
and beauty, and best of all, a wise, serious look ; public school-houses among the fine build- 
ings on the sightly avenues, — and the churches more conspicuous and beautiful than the 
theatre. Business, knowledge, beauty, religion, are in the features of our city, more 
than pleasure and diversions. Cities take their physiognomy, in large degree, from the 
spirit of their builders and citizens : we expect the child to possess its parents' quahties 
and tendency. Who were the fathers, and mothers, and builders of Buffalo, and were 
they such men and women as, according to our philosophy, we must presume them to be ? 

Mr. Ellicott, who first saw the possibihty of a large city here, was no doubt a man of 
fine natural sense, and far-sighted ; he saw what no one else could, or did see, for many 
years ; and long after he had laid out the city, and in his own mind saw the streets made, 
and fined with blocks of stores and houses, emigrants from the East, refusing opportuni- 
ties here, went on to Chautau(|ua and to New Connecticut, not believing a word of Mr. 
Ehicott's about the certainty of a large city at the foot of Lake Erie. Men were slow to 
see that a great commerce must grow up on these Lakes. They could not comprehend 
the possibihties of the vast wilderness and prairies of the West ; and the settlers that 



THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF BUFFALO. 5 

came in here to the hamlet and village of Buffalo, from the beginning even up to 1816, 
had not begun to believe in Mr. EUicott's prophecy. They came here to make a living 
by the local trade, and perhaps secure something by advance of village lots; but very 
few cared much for the great city plan, with its Dutch named avenues and streets. 
Though General Washington, thirty years before, on a journey to Central and Northern 
New York, had foreseen western settlement and commerce, and though Mr. EUicott saw 
a city here, the ordinary men said, what chance for commerce here, while the creek has 
to make a new mouth for itself, every spring, through the shifting sands of the Lake 
shore ? And yet commerce did increase, and Buffalo dragged along until it was burned 
up; then it arose again, and after the war was over, new men came, with new ideas, and 
great expectations. Western emigration began to be an astounding fact, and far-sighted 
men saw what must be the consequence of it; ways of communication must be opened 
between West and East; a great canal must be made from the Hudson to Lake Erie, and 
at the western terminus of that canal, wherever it be, there must be a large commercial 
city. Such thoughts and conclusions drew bright, enterprising men to this vicinity, to 
Black Rock, and Buffalo, from the new settlements of Western New York, and from New 
England, especially from Connecticut Superior men came looking after the great 
opportunity. Where should the city be ? 

Gen. Peter B. Porter, an energetic, imperative man, a distingutshed officer in the war 
that had lately closed, graced with the laurels he had won, and influential in the whole 
State, said the canal must come to Black Rock, and there the city must be ; and he and 
his friends prevailed so far as to procure large State appropriations for the Black Rock 
harbor, and they felt so confident, that Black Rock was laid out for a great city. Mean- 
time Buffalo was struggling for recognition of her position and claims. We can hardly 
conceive of the intense rivalry of these two localities, which now are both Buffalo. It 
was a struggle of some years. No pains, and no money that could be had, were spared 
by the rival places to draw in influential inhabitants. Black Rock said that Buffalo 
Creek had no mouth, and no harbor could be made here ; and Buffalo said that Black 
Rock would be swept down the Niagara as soon as it attempted to have wharves and 
shipping; and besides, said Buffalo, its face made up into an interrogation point, how 
are vessels to get up through the swift water from Black Rock into the Lake ? Oxen 
were used tugging the first vessels up the shore. Was commerce always to go by 
ox-power, by what the sailors called a horned breeze ? 

The contest was at its height from 1820 to 1823. In the summer of 1821 or 1822, 
an eventful meeting took place in Buffalo. The Canal Commissioners held a session in 
the Dancing Hall of the Eagle tavern. The ohject of meetiuL]^ here was to consider the 
claims of Buffalo to be the western terminus of the Erie Canal It was life or death to 
Buffalo, as they all thought. Would that we had a true picture of that meeting. Mr. 
Joseph Dart was an eye-witness, and has given me some account of it. DeWitt Clinton 
was chairman of the Commissioners, and Stephen Van Rensselaer the patroon, Henry 
Seymour, Myron Holley, and Samuel Young, were his associates, — an august company ! 
The great question was. Black Rock or Buffalo ? Gen. Porter was the chief advocate for 
Black Rock; and with shrewd ability, for which he was so distinguished, he advocated 
the cause of the dwellers by the River side. The chief advocate for Buffalo was Judge 
Wilkeson. He was not a lawyer, not much used to pubhc speaking, never trained and 



6 THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF BUFFALO. 

cultured in scliools or college, but a man of great natural force, vigorous common 
sense and mighty will, with courage and hope born out of his rugged strength. Edu- 
cated by the rough, earnest struggles of border life, he bad made his way here, and 
saw at once the practical bearings of this great question ; he knew this w^as the place for 
the city, and his confidence, and the substantial reasons he could give for it, made him 
the man to plead for the interests of Buffalo. The day was hot, and our advocate, says 
my informant, pulled off his coat, and according to the habit of his laborious life, Avorked 
for us all in his shirt sleeves! And Mr. Dart says that after the hearing, Gov. Clinton 
summed up the wliole matter in a judicial way, letting it be quite distinctly seen that 
in his opinion this was the place for the city, and that here the canal should terminate. 
During the year 1822 or 1823, with great struggles the question was settled. The canal 
was to come to Buftalo. There were large-minded men here, who saw the opportunity, 
and with all their might laid hold of it. 

The first thing to be done was to give Buff^ilo Creek a permanent stationary mouth, 
into which vessels could enter. It was a difficult and expensive work. Black Rock said 
it never could be done; but there were men here who said it should be done. But how ? 
There was not ready money enough in the whole village to pay for such a work, and it 
was proposed that, if possible, $12,000 should be obtained by loan from the State. A 
bond was made, and the names that went upon that bond for the loan should be known 
to every inhabitant of Buffalo. That was the hard lift, that the magnum opus — and 
showed the noble purpose and determination of the men who gave the bond. In their 
day of small things, all of them comparatively poor, they bound themselves for the 
means to make it seem possible that there could be a harbor at this point; everything 
depended on this. The State refused to do the experimental work; the Canal Commis- 
sioners doubted : and so four men put their names to the bond, and got the if;! 2,000 from 
the State; and with other money, private subscriptions in small sums from the villagers, 
to be given in labor, in shoes, in blacksniithing, in stone, in pork, in brush for fascines, the 
first breakwater was constructed, under the direction, and in part by the hands of Judge 
Wilkeson, in 1820 and 1821. These were the names upon that bond: at the head, and 
pro!)ably the originator of the plan, Samuel Wilkeson ; let it stand upon his monument 
at Forest Lawn, of granite hke his character — urbem condidit, he built the city; Charles 
Townsend and George Coit, young men from Connecticut, partners in a village trade ; 
and Oliver Forward, a lawyer and strong-natured man ; all these four are builders of 
the city. They tuok up the mountain, and cast it into the sea. Others helped — all 
worked then, when life and death for Buffalo hung on the ends of the balance. How 
little do we, who have entei^ed into other men's labors, think how they struggled for 
what we so securely enjoy ! There was Judge Wiikeson's breakwater, made of fascines 
filled in with rocks and sand, and bound together. Black Rock, and others, said the 
first spring storm would send the Judge's fascines down the Niagara in a hurry; and 
there was danger — Buffalo felt afraid. Mr. Henry Lovejoy says he remembers going, 
with two hundred men, down to tlie bi'cakwater at the mouth of the creek in the spring 
of 1822, each with a shovel on his slioulder, that they might be there when the ice 
broke up and went out of the creek, and by shovelling manage the currents, and pi'o- 
tect the new breakwater. They waited there all day, the creek, still as dead, playing 
possum while they watched it. At dark they came home, hungry, tired, scolding at 



THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF BUFFALO. 7 

commercial difficulties; and lo, in the night the flood burst out, as my informant says, 
turning the breakwater upside down ; but the Judge had made it fast together, and so 
heavily weighted it with stone, that it held fest its integrity and kej)t its place ; and to 
this day, the old cribs remain under the massive stone breakwater at the light house. 
The floods were foiled, and Black Rock was non-suited — Buffalo had a harbor, and a 
way to get into it, and out of it. 

Meantime the Canal was making, and in 1825 came the grand opening of the New 
York higliway between East and West; all clouds now had cleared away, and sunshine 
rested upon the fortunes of Buffalo. 

We will not fail to do justice to those men who were the fathers and builders of our 
handsome-faced city; there were among them many large-minded, far-seeing men, and 
they gave their own great proportions to the city they builded ; and the expression of our 
city's physiognomy tells of Ellicott and Wilkeson, and Townsend and Coit, and Forward 
and Heacock, Johnson and Pratt, and Love and Tracey, and Potter, and Joy and Web- 
ster; and Chapin, and the men who preached the Gospel, and those who taught the 
youth. Those men, the builders, almost aU are gone ; and if any one inquires for their 
monument, tell him to open his eyes and look around — Circumspice ! 

But the most of those men, who did so well, and the active men who came after 
them, are said to have made fools of themselves in the s]2S.Qillations of 1835, which were 
ndeed as wild here in Buffalo as anywhere in the country. There are old men in Kew 
England, and multitudes of them in Old England, who think of our beautiful city as 
wearing a fool's face, because it had the speculation mania badly. Let me say a word 
about this. We deny that there is a single deep mark of a fool in the physiognomy of 
our city. The folly was only a passing shade. The fact is, we all make fools of our- 
selves sometime, in some way, and the only question among us is of more or less. Go 
read how the canny Scotchmen, about 1694, were maddened and befooled by the 
Darien speculation, which had no other basis than a dream-idea which one Paterson had 
of opening a passage across the Isthmus of Darien. Fletcher, of Saltoun, chiefly known 
by his saying, " Let me make a nation's songs, and whoever will may make their laws," 
wise as he was, had this fever, and others among the shrewdest ; and for six years, cold 
Scotia was all aflame, and then came utter collapse of the emptiness. Go read how 
Paris, all France indeed, was befooled, in I7l8, by John Law, and his scheme of the Mis- 
sissippi and India Company, a magnificent humbug hatched in the brain"of one single 
man ; all Paris went crazy for three or four yea]-s; — more absurd things are told of, than 
were ever done here. 

But England claims never to lose common sense. Go read of her South Sea mania 
in 1720. The whole nation was affected, from the throne to the cottage. The idea was 
to get gold and silver by going round Cape Horn to Peru and Mexico. The scheme 
was called the Earl of Oxford's masterpiece. Spain, powerful then, never allowed them 
to do a thing towards realizing their idea ; but knaves blew it up into the most magnifi- 
cent bubble, and for four or five years the South Sea mania and its mighty Company 
swelled with gigantic pretensions; it would shoulder the whole national debt of £31,- 
000,000 sterhng — it w^ould pour riches into every house; it swelled, and then it burs?t; 
and English Common Sense was seen, with foolish and enraged look, staring at the float- 
ing vapors ! The mania of speculation here was not so strange, — there was foundation 



8 THE PHYSIOGNOMY UF BUFFALO. 

to stand upon. From the opening of the canal in 1825, there was a rush of westera 
emigration through Buffalo — each year it grew greater than before ; the canal was 
crowded ; hotels all full ; warehouses groaned under their burdens ; vessels and steamers 
could not be built fast enough for the demands of business. I was here in the autumn of 
1835, and one morning I was at the dock, with many other strangers, gazing upon the 
mighty heaving western tide. There was a pile of goods and furniture all along on Joy & 
Webster's wharf, more than twenty feet high, and upon the top of it sat as many as a 
dozen Senecas, men and women ; they too, with the rest of us, gazing with astonishment at 
this sudden flood of hfe sweeping over them, coming they knew not whence, and going 
they knew not whither. It was marvellous ! Land was wanted, land to stand upon- 
land to speculate with; land was gold. And then it seemed that all the opening West 
was to come with its harvest contributions floating right to Buflalo. Railroads then were 
not much thought of for carrying freight ; to this point came the Lake — from this went 
the Canal — and here might be the New York of the West; and so it would have been, 
but for the coming of railroads to compete with vessels for the carrying trade. .It was 
not strange that the men here made a great mistake, got wild with hope, and that some 
were hoisted upon their bubbles to get very bad falls ; but generally there was some 
basis to speculation, it was not aU idea and dream ; there were real facts enough to make 
sensible men hope prodigiously. It may seem very wise to look back and laugh at the 
■ old builders and business men of Bufl'alo, but they were wiser than Solomon, compared 
with Scotland, France, and England, when their ravings came. 

I love to think what those men of Buffalo in 1835, in their great hope, meant to do 
here. The merchants were to have an Exchange filling Clarendon Square, and with a 
towering dome two hundred and twenty-five feet above the pavement. Com. Perry 
was to have a monument of white marble in front of the churches, one hundred feet 
high, with graceful carving, armorial bearings, and emblematic statues. Education was 
to have the University of Western New York with magnificent endowment, and the 
foremost men of the country in its various departments. Nor were the good intents all 
on paper merely ; one of the wildest of the hopers did actually start a free pubhc school 
for sixty scholars, children of the poor, and kept it open and flourishing for several years. 
I honor men who, if they do get crazed by enterprise and too much hope, show them- 
selves large-minded and nobly generous, grateful to patriots, munificent to education, 
mindful of the poor, and anxious to bestow true riches and quickened life upon posterity ! 
With the mind's eye, behold our city's physiognomy, as the great hopers meant it 
should be, with the beautiful Perry monument, and the University of Western New 
York with its grand buildings on North street, rivalling Harvard or Yale, and society 
graced and improved by its teachers and students; and with a commerce on the Lake, 
that might require a Merchants' Exchange as large and high as was dreamed of. Despite 
the ridicule upon those builders' failure, the future may fulfill their expectation more nearly 
than we think. 

In regard to faces, association does wonders; the old adage comes true — handsome is, 
that handsome does ; even homely features may get so blent with truth, love, and noble- 
ness, that to the mind's eye they are beautifnl. The kind, good woman, though with no 
line of grace or beauty in form or face, who has left home and friends, and for the sake 
of mercy gone to the hospitals, becomes beautiful as an angel to the sick soldier, as she 



THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF BUFFALO. 9 

bends over him with a mother's tenderness, striving to reheve his anguish; and just so 
it is with cities' faces. There is Kttle Calais, in France: to my mind it has always worn 
a halo of glory, ever since in my old school book I read how Edward III. of England 
was about to put the city to fire and sword, but consented to spare the inhabitants, and 
their homes and children, if six of tlie principal men of the city would volunteer to come 
bare-headed and bare-footed, with halters about tlieir necks, to be hanged in view of his 
besieging, victorious army; and the martyr heroes came, Eustace De St. Pierre at their 
head. Such nobleness has given interest and beauty to Calais for all these five hundred 
years! The old pilgrims of 1620 gave a glory to the unromantic shores and barren 
hills of Plymouth, and travellers will not cease to go to that shrine of lofty self-sacrifice 
to truth and freedom, to gaze upon the brave, heroic ffice of that landscape. And, alas ! 
how the face of a city that is fair enough to the outward sight, may to the mind's eye 
get a look of deformity, that will make outward comeliness as nothing. There is New 
York, imperial city, at the gates of the world's commerce, the waters gathering around 
her as if anxious to bear her freighted keels; but, 0, that hard, meanly cruel scowd 
upon her face, wrought there by riot against law, and savage massacre of weak, unof- 
fending men, women, and children, because God had made them with a dark skin ! 
And, let the truth be told, our own city got an ugly mark, a stain not readily washed 
out, by just the beginning of similar riot and bloodshed. Sin destroys beauty ! 

Look far away towards the sunset — to the golden horn of the West, where San 
Francisco, Queen of the Pacific, sits beside the sea. She has been noble. Though so far 
away, and tempted to stand aloof in selfish isolation, she has felt the laboring heart-beat 
of the Union and of liberty, and while bearing her share of public burden, she has sent 
hundreds of thousands to the Sanitary Commission. With generous loyalty she turns 
toward us, and stretches out her arms to help. To the mind's eye, how noble and fair 
the foce of that young Pacific Queen ! Handsome is, that handsome does. 

The builders of our city have done their work, and on the whole have done it well 
They have made for us a dw^elling-place with open, finely-formed features, and their ear- 
nest, generous spirit gives a handsome expression. But Bufi'alo is not finished : genera- 
tions yet to come are still to be builders, and every one of us, in public or private life, is 
giving expression more and more, good or bad, to our city's face. 



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